to your HTML
Add class="sortable" to any table you'd like to make sortable
Click on the headers to sort
Thanks to many, many people for contributions and suggestions.
Licenced as X11: http://www.kryogenix.org/code/browser/licence.html
This basically means: do what you want with it.
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for (var i=0; i

How likely is it that there will be a recession in the next 12 months? Well, now you can find out for yourself with Political Calculations' latest tool, which does the math developed by the Federal Reserve Board's Jonathan Wright in The Yield Curve and Predicting Recessions (HT: James Hamilton's Econbrowser, where the specific formulation used in the following tool was outlined).

In the tool below, enter the current bond yields for the 10-Year Treasury Bond and the 3-Month Treasury Bond. You'll also need to enter the Federal Funds Rate. The tool will determine the probability of a recession occurring in the next 12 months from the spread between the treasury bonds and factoring in the Federal Funds Rate, according to Wright's Model B:

Update (22 September 2006): We've developed a tool for visualizing the odds that will help you quickly determine where we are in terms of recession risk!

Using this model, a combination of two factors greatly increases the likelihood of a recession:

An inverted yield curve (a negative spread produced when the 10-year treasury bond yield rate drops to be lower than the 3-month treasury's yield).

A high federal funds rate.

How well will this method work in predicting future recessions? Time will tell, but for now, James Hamilton reports that it does appear to be a factor in setting the Fed's policy:

According to Model B, the low values for the spread that we saw last summer were not a source of concern for future economic activity because a fed funds rate below 4% was so low by historical standards. Research like this seems to have played a role in Fed Chair Ben Bernanke's assessment that

I would not interpret the currently very flat yield curve as indicating a significant economic slowdown to come, for several reasons. First, in previous episodes when an inverted yield curve was followed by recession, the level of interest rates was quite high, consistent with considerable financial restraint. This time, both short- and long-term interest rates--in nominal and real terms--are relatively low by historical standards.

As for James Hamilton's assessment of the Fed's recession predicting model:

... if we accept Model B at face value, a couple more 25-basis point bumps by the Fed would put the funds rate at 5.25% and likely push the spread into negative territory. From the table above, that starts to make a recession look like a pretty good possibility.

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

Materials on this website are published by Political Calculations to provide visitors with free information and insights regarding the incentives created by the laws and policies described. However, this website is not designed for the purpose of providing legal, medical or financial advice to individuals. Visitors should not rely upon information on this website as a substitute for personal legal, medical or financial advice. While we make every effort to provide accurate website information, laws can change and inaccuracies happen despite our best efforts. If you have an individual problem, you should seek advice from a licensed professional in your state, i.e., by a competent authority with specialized knowledge who can apply it to the particular circumstances of your case.